


Theater Masks

by JazzRaft



Series: Wicked Games [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: "How long have you been standing there?""Longer than you'd like."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/155134689857/can-i-request-dialogue-4-with-aranea-ravus-the) for #4 from the "Dialogue" choices in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/155032475672/sentence-dialogue-drabble-prompts)

“Citizens of Tenebrae, I stand before you today not as the High Commander of the Imperial Army, but as a son of… a bitch. A son of a bitch that sold you out…”

Ravus slapped the pages of his speech against his face, the papers ridged with a hundred folds and frayed at the edges. Every time he re-read the script, he found something new to hate about it. It had been perfect the first time he finished editing it, but then he read it again to make sure it wasn’t his pride throwing shades over his eyes, and found it to be full of hollow lies and empty promises. If he could read it, the people would hear it, and rather than calm an impending mob, he’d end up inciting one.

Growling in frustration and throwing the pages onto the desk, Ravus paced away from the speech. Maybe some distance from it would help clear his head enough to fix it. It was going to take three continents over three feet to give him the space he needed though. Short of high-jacking an airship, flying halfway across the globe, and effectively fleeing the event altogether, there was no way to escape all of his two-faced words.

“Citizens of Tenebrae…” he muttered. “… _Brothers and sisters_ of Tenebrae… Because you’re such a great brother, aren’t you, Ravus?”

He dragged a hand through his hair, mussing the neat silver strands, and paced back to the desk, glaring at the neat lines of black ink. How did Lunafreya do this? Why did she inherit their mother’s tact for public speaking and save none to share with him? Why did he have to be the one to give this speech anyway?

“Because it’s easier for the people to hear it from a man they _trust_ ,” Ardyn had said, emphasizing the last word into a taunt.

Ravus swallowed the bitter taste in the back of his throat like it was chocobo piss. His Magitek arm clawed at the mahogany desk, imagining it was the chancellor’s neck, but even in his fantasies, the man continued to smirk rather than choke, golden gaze always spiting him.

Maybe he needed to adopt some of that deception for himself to deliver this speech, much as he was loathe to admit it. Maybe it wasn’t the words so much as it was the manner in which he spoke them. Ravus marched over to the bedroom mirror, glaring at his reflection in it… wherein problem number one lied. The Glare. It bore all of his scorn for the Empire, sharp and unfiltered in the steely glower. He could see it in the way his shoulders were set, in the cut of his jaw, in the way his fingers tried not to flex into fists, and if he could see it, Tenebrae would see it.

He tried projecting his sister’s demure smile onto his own face. Better to try an honest smile first, rather than a pompous smirk. It was difficult to shape his mouth into the upturned curve that charmed the entirety of Eos and nurtured their adoration. It looked so natural on Lunafreya’s face, but on his it looked wrong; like something painted on a marionette.

“Sons and daughters of Tenebrae,” he attempted anyway, finding it even harder to maintain the embarrassing farce of a smile while he spoke. “I stand… _We_ stand not as victims, but as… hostages, really.”

He threw the stupid smile away with a shake of his head and took a breath, ready to attempt Ardyn’s terrible smirk instead. He pictured the chancellor, watched his head crook to the side, arms trailing exuberant planes in the air around each word he spoke, teeth flashing like tiny white daggers just beneath the curl of his lips. Ravus huffed out the tension in his shoulders, stood up straight, and tilted his head onto an angle. The pull at the side of his lips was even more difficult than the first attempt. It looked more like he was fighting some nervous tick with his head that lop-sided.

“People of Tenebrae,” he recited again, remembering to move his arms as he spoke, the metallic joints of the Magitek arm clicking sinisterly in the effort. If his forced recital wasn’t unconvincing enough, that wicked clicking sound would be reminder enough that Niflheim cost Tenebrae more than it rewarded. Still, he could get used to the smirk. He didn’t have to hide so much of his anger with it, in fact, needed some of it to make the crooked line work.

“Ugh, hell no. First one was better.”

Ravus froze, arms mid-gesture and silver-gray eyes still as ice as they caught the shadow in the mirror behind him. She leaned beside the window, arms and ankles crossed, reclining against the wall with a devilish smirk of her own on her face. It was predatory and unpracticed, and unlike Ardyn’s, there was a dangerous honesty to it. It said what she was thinking in a clear, crescent cut.

“How long have you been standing there?” Ravus asked, voice clipped.

“Longer than you’d like.”

Ravus turned around to face her, mouth twisted back down into a scowl. “Why can’t you use the door?”

Aranea shrugged. “It was closed.” As if that were a socially acceptable excuse for creeping through open windows.

“Ever hear of knocking?”

“I don’t knock. Too easy to ignore.”

The commodore pushed herself off the wall and prowled the room, strolling treacherously close to Ravus’s abused script on the desk.

“Did you need something?” the commander asked through his teeth, marching over to the desk to swipe up the papers and stuff them into his coat.

Aranea continued to grin, implacable and infinitely entertained. Ravus tried to avoid looking at her directly, fighting down the heat of embarrassment before it could fume across his cheeks. Her smile was unnerving in a way unlike either of the two he’d been practicing. There was a hunger to it, no matter how big or small the situation which summoned it was. When Aranea was amused, that smirk couldn’t devour the source slow enough, savoring the shame, refusing to let the subject of it forget it so that it could ferment, and further satiate her appetite for humiliation.

“I’m supposed to review the aerial support set-up with you for tomorrow’s speech. Nothin’ to really go over though. Just came to avoid an earful from the Emperor. Definitely worth the trip.”

She chuckled and Ravus felt his pulse spike. That was the chuckle of a woman who had every intention of using what she’d just witnessed to torture him for all eternity. Despite having no delusions that she had the upper-hand and always would, Ravus tried to regain some semblance of control, nevertheless.

“There’s no reason to expect anything will go wrong,” he said, pointing his gaze towards her with precise intent.

If he’d hope the look would admonish her, he’d been gravely mistaken. If anything, he’d just given her more fuel. Her smirk widened. “No reason at all. I expect your _sons and daughters of Tenebrae_ won’t be too distracted.”

Oh, and there it was. The ammunition she was going to shoot into his skull to force him into letting her get away with anything. Her grin never wavered, and it was infuriating Ravus to try and decipher how that was so. It was a terrifying smile, one he was sure he was going to see in his nightmares for months to come, and it was effortless. There was a burden behind Lunafreya’s lips when she smiled at the people of Eos, and it was always so obvious the falsehoods that upheld Ardyn’s grin, but there was no duality to the way Aranea smirked. There was no secret behind it. It merely was. And it was going to rule him until the day this particular embarrassment of his finally bored her and she found someone else to torment with another hidden shame she skillfully divulged to covet for her nefarious ends.

“Izunia wants my boat stationed to the far-east, but I think I’m gonna fly up a little closer. Not as nice a view from back there.”

She patted his arm – the Magitek arm, not even hesitating to touch it, as if it _wasn’t_ some malicious tool of daemonic confection – and slid to the door, expecting her demands were translated clearly enough to the commander.

“First one,” she threw over her shoulder before she was out the door.

Ravus turned, brows drawn in confusion. Aranea indicated the mirror and mimicked the sweet, simple smile of the Oracle that he’d been attempting in front of it. “The other one makes you look like an even bigger asshole than the guy you got it from.”

He heard her crimson heels thumping like war drums down the hall long after she was gone. He tried Lunafreya’s smile one more time in the mirror, but couldn’t find any redeeming qualities to it. After a moment’s hesitation, he tried one more smile. It was devil-may-care and earnestly despicable.

The next day, he had Tenebrae eating out of the palm of his hand, Aranea’s crimson ship bobbing with pride overhead.


End file.
